Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) are frequently used simply as reflectors. Other applications include vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), filtering and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). The performance of DBRs (e.g., bandwidth and reflectivity) improves with the index contrast of the materials used to form the DBR. In other words, one material has a high index of refraction, and the other material has a low index. However, losses also increase as a consequence of light diffraction in the low-index regions. Conventional solutions for reducing losses are usually either reduction of index contrast, or an excessive shortening of the low-index region, both leading to a decrease in device performance. In order to provide high reflectivity in small sizes, diffraction losses must be reduced to a minimum.